This is John Batchel, a conversation with colleague Edmund Fitten Brown of the Foundation for

Defense of Democracy about His Malah. He describes it brilliantly and vividly as a punched-out

fighter on the mat, getting up slowly, and thinking about what he's going to do next if the

referee doesn't call the fight.

Is Edmund Fitton Brown on Hezbollah today,

re-arming a new scale of threat and not disarmed,

not even close.

Much more of this tonight.

Well, I don't think that this is a sort of sudden revival of Hezbollah. I think this is a

case of, you know, a boxer sort of stumbling back up off the canvas. And, you know, if the,

if the referee doesn't call the fight and the winning boxer is not allowed to deliver a knockout punch,

then, you know, you may find that you've got unfinished business on your hands.

And I think there's definitely unfinished business in Lebanon.

You know, the Israelis are occupying hilltops, which are important for them in monitoring

terms. The, you know, Unifil we talked about, so it's a good segue. They're still present

in Lebanon. I don't think they're doing any good, although they're under much more

skeptical monitoring themselves by the United States.

France also, in theory, has a role, but I don't think that France is a particularly useful

player in this because of its colonial history and because of Macron's general weakness on

Israel-related issues. I think what we really have is a ceasefire which Hezbollah intends to break.

It's being monitored by the United States and Israel, and Israel is hitting any manifestation

of Hezbollah breaches of the ceasefire. And the United States is happy to endorse that, rightly so, because they can clearly

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